


rant to me, i like the sound

by NeverNooitNiet



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, Fluff, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 18:13:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18783502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverNooitNiet/pseuds/NeverNooitNiet
Summary: And then Crowley started to laugh. A wild, hysterical, wracking thing, threatening to tip his wine out of his glass and into his lap with the force of it.“We,” he said, with a smile so wide it threatened to split his face in two, “are so incredibly fucked. Cheers!”And he raised his glass up high.





	rant to me, i like the sound

The world hadn’t ended, and Aziraphale was recataloging his books.

It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared: Adam hadn’t replaced Aziraphale’s own collection, he’d simply— augmented it, as it were, with some of his own favorites. Which was… thoughtful, Aziraphale supposed, or even funny, depending on how you looked at it, and having some books he could actually sell without any qualms might finally convince the tax authorities to leave him be.

There was a knock at the door, and Aziraphale sighed. He knew who it was, of course— well, there was only one person it could reasonably be. Aziraphale set down a dusty first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and went to let Crowley in.

True to form, the demon was standing awkwardly in the doorway, cradling a large bottle of Bordeaux in one arm. Aziraphale frowned, then stopped, then frowned again.

“My dear boy, you look… that is to say…” he paused, worrying at his lip, trying to puzzle out how he ought to phrase this in a vaguely tactful manner. Crowley was in a better state than he’d been at the airbase, of course, and and notably less covered in soot, but there was something remarkably bedraggled about the demon all the same, in the rumpled cuffs of his suit and the lank fall of his hair and the faint glow of some manic light under his sunglasses. Aziraphale’s frown deepened, and he tried again. “Crowley, are you certain you’re quite all right?”

But Crowley wasn’t listening, peering instead over Aziraphale’s shoulder and into the newly restored interior of the bookshop.

“Fixed this up too, did he? Got my Bentley as well,” he added, with a listless wave in the vague direction of the street. He sighed, and moved to walk into the bookshop. Aziraphale scuttled along after him.

“Crowley, have— have you been sleeping?” He ventured, feeling as though he might have stumbled upon the root of the problem. Oh, technically they didn’t need sleep, of course, but Crowley, at any rate, had gotten distinctly used to it over the centuries.

“Hmm? Oh, no. Can’t,” said Crowley, depositing himself on Aziraphale’s sofa. “Can’t get into my flat, see. There’s a puddle of dead duke of Hell sort of blocking my way in.”

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, uneasily, sitting down next to him.

“Well, he had to leave something, I suppose,” said Crowley, gesturing around him. “Bentley’s back, bookshop’s back… we need something to remind us.”

Aziraphale miracled the wine into glasses, and for a moment, they sat and drank in silence.

And then Crowley started to laugh. A wild, hysterical, wracking thing, threatening to tip his wine out of his glass and into his lap with the force of it.

“We,” he said, with a smile so wide it threatened to split his face in two, “are so incredibly fucked. Cheers!”

And he raised his glass up high.

Aziraphale stared at this little display for a moment, and surreptitiously refilled his own glass.

“The apocalypse isn’t going to happen,” he said, very slowly, in case his partner had gone completely mad. “We— well, Adam, really— stopped it, remember? And put everything back to normal.”

“Not everything. I’ve still got a duke of Hell congealing into my carpet.”

Aziraphale squeezes his eyes closed for a moment and tried again.

“Yes, well—”

“Which means,” Crowley said, voice rising, “that I still killed a duke of Hell. And trapped another one in my answering machine. And you essentially broke out of Heaven and possessed an old lady—”

“Trust me, she was no lady,” Aziraphale muttered. Crowley ignored him.

“And we both stood up to our superiors— and need I remind you who our fucking superiors _are_ , Aziraphale— and we might not have stopped the apocalypse personally, but we bloody well tried to, and— and—”

He broke off quite suddenly, and looked at Aziraphale with a bleak sort of nihilistic mania.

“Anyway. The world’s not fucked, not for a little while, at least. But _we_ are. There’s no way we’re getting out of this, angel. No way in He— at all,” he corrected, pulling a face.

They didn’t talk for a bit. They drank, a lot, the wine and then some stronger stuff.

“What’ll it be, d’you reckon?” Crowley asked. “When they come for you. I mean, my side’s fairly obvious, eternal torture and all, but your lot would need to be slightly more creative.”

Aziraphale had been vaguely aware that this was a possibility, yes, but in keeping with the last six thousand years of behaviour, he’d been stubbornly refusing to think about it. But cushioned by a warm blanket of alcohol, he could sort of reach out and… consider what might happen.

He did not particularly like what he found.

“You’re being awfully glib about this, you know,” he told Crowley, who just shrugged and continued to watch him expectantly. Aziraphale sighed. “Well, I could Fall, for a start,” he said, trying to keep an even tone.

Crowley grinned and nudged Aziraphale’s shoulder affectionately.

“Oh that’d be _great_ , they could have us on adjourning racks.”

“I feel as though eternity with you in this state might be worse than the torture,” Aziraphale said snippily.

Crowley took an impressively large swig of wine.

“Oh, come on. There’d be worse people to be stuck with for forever, and you know it. Gabriel, for one.”

Aziraphale considered this, and found that he couldn’t particularly argue against it.

“Oh, all right. You’re officially less horrible than Gabriel. Are you happy?”

“Elated,” said Crowley with a lopsided grin, and Aziraphale realised with a pang that if they _were_ punished, in all likelihood he’d never see Crowley again.

It wasn’t a surprise to realise that he’d miss the demon, with his grinning wit and his almost feline grace and crackling energy, but it was a surprise to realise just how much he was going to miss him.

For all Aziraphale knew, he really could get an eternity of Gabriel.

He shuddered at the thought. Beside him, Crowley had gone awfully quiet, all of a sudden, all the nervous energy drained out of him.

“Oh, let’s not do this,” said Aziraphale wretchedly. “If this is going to happen, then— then we ought to be making the most of what time we have left, not stewing in our own misery.”

“And it is going to happen, isn’t it?” said Crowley, in a terribly small voice. He’d taken his sunglasses off at some point, slit pupils wide with alcohol or terror or both, and was turning them over and over in his hands. “There isn’t— they’re going to come for us, aren’t they? There’s no chance that they’ll leave us be.”

Aziraphale sighed.

“Yes,” he said softly. “It certainly does look that way, doesn’t it?”

“So then,” said Crowley slowly, “that’s it. We’re one hundred percent fucked.”

“I think you’ve rather made your point,” said Aziraphale, bitter agitation leaking into his voice. Crowley shook his head and set down his glass.

“Well, it’s just— if we’re already being punished, that’s it then, isn’t it? We could do more things, worse things, and it wouldn’t matter, because _they’re coming for us anyway_.”

Aziraphale blinked.

“We’ve essentially committed treason, and you murdered a duke of Hell,” he pointed out. “I’m not sure what worse you could do, at this point.”

“Well, this, for starters,” said Crowley, and kissed him.

Aziraphale kissed him back, hungrily, and then suddenly Crowley’s hands were in his hair and his arms were wrapping around Crowley’s back, wanting to pull him closer, and it was a good few minutes before either of them were able to form any sort of coherent thought.

“Um,” said Crowley, when they finally broke apart.

“Quite,” said Aziraphale, trying to avoid looking at Crowley’s mouth. “And that was…”

Crowley shrugged, picking at his long-beleaguered fingernails, which, given the stress of the last eleven years, at this stage seemed to be hanging on mostly out of pure spite.

“What you said, I suppose. Making the most of what time we have left.”

Aziraphale nodded. And felt sick, because they really might not have much time left, and then who knew what would happen, really, because Heaven could be sadistic bastards when they wanted to be, but it surely wouldn’t be anything good. And then Crowley would be— would be—

The pair of them had spent _six thousand years_ on Earth together. A small eternity, and yet, Aziraphale realised suddenly, nowhere near enough time, because he still hadn’t said half of what he felt, hadn’t really done anything properly significant.

“The most of what we have,” he said numbly. “What _do_ we have?”

Without really thinking, he grabbed Crowley’s hand, threaded his small, neat fingers through the demon’s slender ones.

They sat there, for a moment, close together and agonizingly fair apart.

“Stay here,” Aziraphale blurted out. Crowley shot him an odd look, pupils narrowing back into their customary slits.

“‘M not going anywhere just yet, angel.”

There was an unusual softness to his voice, an intangible reminder of whatever this thing was between them, all the things that they still needed to stay. Aziraphale took a deep breath.

“No, I mean— you should stay with me for a bit. Er, in the bookshop. You can sleep, and I could get you some holy water, in case your side come, and we could… we could keep each other safe. Or try to.”

“Yeah?” said Crowley, and there was something that almost looked like hope in his eyes, but it was such a fragile, terrible almost, and Aziraphale hated it bitterly. Of the pair of them, Crowley had always been the optimist, the one to keep searching desperately for another way out. Aziraphale didn’t do that, didn’t know how to do that, to keep the both of them afloat.

“Yes. Absolutely,” said Aziraphale, with a confidence he’d seemingly miracled out of thin air.

Crowley, very slowly, pulled their intertwined hands towards him and pressed a kiss to Aziraphale’s knuckles.

“I do love you, you know,” he murmured. And it sounded terribly like a goodbye.

“I love you too,” said Aziraphale, but the words didn’t feel like his, feel like they meant anything, not when despite the small smile playing round Crowley’s lips, he could read the unspoken message in his eyes: _but that won’t be enough._

And Aziraphale made up his mind.

All right, so he couldn’t do motivating. He was nowhere near tactful enough for to be properly comforting, either, to soothe all of Crowley’s fears, especially when he shared them.

But what Aziraphale _could_ do was bloody well be a stubborn bastard, when he wanted to be.

Slowly, reluctantly, he untangled his fingers from Crowley’s, folded his arms across his chest.

“Right, then,” he said slowly. “ _Right._ And now you’re going to get some blasted sleep.”

Sat as he was, half-slumped against Aziraphale, eyes wide and dark hair lapping against the angles of his face, there was something terribly young and frightened to the set of Crowley’s face as he vehemently shook his head.

“Look, we probably don’t have that much time left, and— and I don’t just want to sleep it away, all right? Not when—”

Aziraphale ghosted a kiss against Crowley’s forehead.

“Get some sleep,” he repeated. “I’ll be here when you wake up. I promise.”

Crowley sighed, falling short, as he had so many times over the centuries, against the impenetrable wall of Aziraphale’s steely determination, and made a show of rolling his eyes, depositing himself so that his head was squarely in the middle of Aziraphale’s lap.

Aziraphale stared down at this unexpected arrival.

“Ah. I had sort of meant, er, upstairs.”

Crowley twisted slightly, snuggling tighter against the soft press of Aziraphale’s stomach.

“You’re getting what you bloody want, angel. No complaining. ‘Sides, you’re _warm_.”

And with that, he wrapped his arms around Aziraphale’s waist and squeezed his eyes tight shut, a distinctly smug expression on his face.

Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and a blanket materialised over Crowley. He wasn’t quite sure if the demon was properly asleep yet or not, but the worry lines in his forehead were beginning to smooth out, his breathing becoming steadier, more rhythmic.

Aziraphale smiled, and picked up his book.

They did not come for them in the morning. Crowley woke up slowly, and Aziraphale warded the bookshop as best he could— nothing that would keep out anyone who really meant business, but a comfort nonetheless. They did not come for them that night, or in the first week, and then the waiting started in earnest.

And it was wonderful, and terrible, the newfound connection between them, the openness, and the fact that it might be snatched away at any moment. The burning knowledge that he should have told Crowley how he felt so, so much earlier.

But the days passed, and still they didn’t come. Aziraphale and Crowley found… new ways to pass the time, and enjoyed them immensely. And then one day, Crowley remarked that their superiors could just as easily get them at the bookshop as in the Ritz, and so off they went.

And they waited, and waited. And nothing happened.

“Maybe this is our punishment,” Aziraphale mused one night, eyes unfocused in the dark. “The anticipation, I mean.”

“Hmm.” Crowley pressed himself tighter against Aziraphale with serpentine grace, buried his face in the angel’s curls. “Well, I’m suffering very terribly, as I’m sure you can tell.”

Aziraphale let out a quiet laugh. Then he stopped, and considered something.

“I could— well, I could clean up your flat if you like, you know,” he offered. “Make sure it’s safe for you to go back. At this stage, there really isn’t any need for you to stay here, if you’d rather go home.”

Crowley was quiet for a moment. Then Aziraphale was vaguely aware of him moving forward, winding their fingers together in the dark.

“You  _ idiot _ ,” he said, with feeling. “Do you really think that’s the only reason I’ve stayed here? This is home. With you.”

“I love you,” Aziraphale said, and this time, it felt safe, it felt _right._

And he held Crowley, and Crowley held him, and for one of the very first times in his long, long life, Aziraphale fell asleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Fool by Cavetown, thanks for reading! xx


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